US Olympic Gymnastics Team 2012: John Orozco, Danell Leyva Shake Up Stereotype

John Orozco stood on the floor of HP Pavilion on Saturday, a microphone in his face and an adoring crowd of 10,516 listening in. At that moment, it hit the 19-year-old from Soundview in the Bronx how far he had come and where he was going next.

The tears flowed. He spoke into the microphone.

“I can’t really believe that I am here right now,” he said.

The rest of the five-man U.S. Olympics Gymnastics team will be selected on Sunday. But the two who earned the automatic berths conferred on the top two finishers at the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials don't look like the stereotypical American gymnasts. One is a Cuban immigrant—Danell Leyva was less than a year old when his mother took him out of Cuba because she was worried about her asthmatic son's health. The other is Orozco, who grew up as a son of Puerto Rican parents in a neighborhood that was a long way from the suburban gymnastics communities that have produced many top U.S. gymnasts.

“When I first started, I realized, 'I'm the only one who looks like this out here,'” Orozco said. “The sport is progressing really well. There's a lot more diversity this time around. That's what makes the U.S. team so great. Everyone's so diverse. We have so many different characters on the team from different places.”

Orozco started in gymnastics when he was eight, after his father William brought home a flier for free lessons at a local gymnasium. Orozco's mother Demaris told the New York Daily News that she gets emotional when people say that her son could contend for a medal at the London Olympics.

“I just cry when I hear things like that because I remember the little boy who said ‘I want to do this,’” she told the Daily News.

It wasn't easy for John Orozco. His peers in the neighborhood made fun of him for taking up the sport.

“My parents raised me to speak and act very proper despite everything that was going on around me in my neighborhood and my school,” he said. “I used to go to school and I'd pick up some negative traits from my surroundings. My mom said, 'Don't you dare say that again. What did you call me? You call me mom and that's it!' It would have been very easy for me to get influenced by my surroundings but my parents didn't let it. They wanted me to stay professional and stay proper and grow up to be a good young man.”

Orozco's highlight on Saturday was when he took the overall lead with a 15.35 on the rings, then came up huge in the vault with a 16.05.

“I don't know how I landed,” Orozco said of his vault. “But I even stuck it somehow, I don't know how. But I'm glad I did that.”

That gave Orozco a lead of 0.55 going into the day's final event for both Orozco and Leyva, the parallel bars. Orozco went first, and had a pedestrian for him routine, earning a score of 14.35, leaving an opening for Leyva to come up big.

“I'm still a little bit frustrated about P-bars because I wanted to finish up good and have an almost perfect competition, but that didn't happen," Orozco said. "It doesn't matter now because I did what I had to do.”

Leyva was next to last on the apparatus and came out of his first skill too hot. From that point on, he made up the rest of his routine on the spot, throwing out the script and performing whatever skill felt like the one he should do next. It was a ridiculous testament to Leyva's talent and ability to not let a mistake stop him from claiming first place. The score was 15.85, best of the day. Leyva ended up winning the competition, 368.350-367.400.

Leyva's coach and stepfather Yin Alvarez said this wasn't the first time Leyva went rouge during a routine.

“He trains that way a lot,” Alvarez said.

Orozco didn't realize that Leyva's routine was ad-libbed.

“He did his normal routine, didn't he,” Orozco said when asked about Leyva. No, he was told.

“I didn't catch that,” he said. “It still looked really smooth and really fluent.”

So now Orozco and Leyva, the kid from the Bronx and the kid who fled Cuba, are the top two American gymnasts, both expected to contend for medals at the Olympics. Orozco was asked about the neighborhood kids who used to make fun of him.

“I'm not very vengeful at all,” he said. “I just hope that they see, I did it. This is it, I did it. And I didn't let their negativity crush my spirit. I just kept on truckin', going after my dream and now it's halfway done.”

Damin Esper is a contributor for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.